Slashdot Mirror
Google Raises Word Limit
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google quietly raised their web search limit to 32 words. Previously, only up to 10 words were allowed per query, with succeeding words being ignored. This is not only important to specific approaches of advanced searching (for example, when you need to exclude many different keywords using the minus operator), but it's also of great help to certain tools using the Google API. While there doesn't seem to be any official statement from Google yet, some more details can be found at my Google blog."
...what the first 32 word google bomb will be.
About time. I always thought of the 10 word limit as gogle's biggest setback.
42
Now you can search for quotes, without having to strip half of the words away. Just cut and paste it in to the browser. I guess this will also make it easier to search for source-code, as it is now you will likely end up at a documentation - site. When you want is some sourcefile from some Sourceforge project.
John Carmack fan, browsing at +5 since 1999.
32 word searching increases the complexity of the search many times over. For a ten word search you're usually talking about finding all documents with all ten words, ordering them by how many of the searched terms were found, and then by their linked-to values. With 32 you're finding ~3.2x as many documents, comparing for 3.2x as many words in each documents, and then finding how popular they were.
So, um, wow.
Direct away from face when opening.
I'm glad the first word in your post is a link to google otherwise I would never have known where to find it. Of course, without the link to google and the Google API page your post would have looked like a blatant attempt to drive traffic to your blog.
characters like !,.'$ is pretty much not supported by google. i would like those to be included in the future.
Looks like the limit was raised to match
MSN's new search whih has has sported a bigger word limit for quite some time.
Now when I do really specific searchs I can get truly relevant google ads!
I discovered how to make a Firefox plugin for limiting Google searches to select few sites, but the problem before was that each site:domainname.com directive was treated as a term. So if you wanted to search 7 sites at once, then google would let you enter maximum of 3 keywords to span that search across multiple sites. So this keywords increase, you can do stuff like 5-word searches across 10 domain names, for example.
It's true, I haven't been able to check it ALL DAY- - That's almost as bad as slashdot being down. Some of my other friends have access still, but my account is teh suxxor at the moment.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
The problem with getting good search results are synonyms (different words that mean the same thing) and homonyms (the same word that means different things). With the 32 word limit, you can avoid both of these problems by following a few simple steps- Let's say, for instance, that you live in new york city and are looking for a moving company that specializes in fragile antiques... typically, the vagueness of such a query makes it hard to find good results, but not if you follow these steps:
1. Break your search into 2-4 principal, independent concepts- In my example, the concepts are NYC (the location) moving company (the company type) and antiques (the specialty)
2. For each concept, come up with as many terms as you can that are descriptions or examples of the concept that are very specific and won't trigger homonyms- For instance, you wouldn't want to use the word "New York" because it is too vague and could refer to the state (a company in Albany, NY won't help you). However, "NYC" "Long Island" "Brooklyn" "Queens" "New York City" are great, even if they seem overly specific- You just need one of them to cause a hit on a relevant page.
3. Put parenthesis around the terms for each concept (be sure to put quotes around each compound term) and OR together the items inside parentheses.
This is what the entire search might look like:
("NYC" OR "Long Island" OR "Brooklyn" OR "Queens" OR "Manhattan" OR "Bronx" OR "New York City" OR "Big Apple") ("moving company" OR "moving companies" OR "specialy movers" OR "professional movers" OR "u-haul" OR "apartment movers") ("fragile" OR "antiques" OR "china" OR "difficult to move")
It takes a bit of time to put together (and google will run slooooow because this kind of logic is very difficult for the search engine), but a search like this will give you the best possible results on hard queries.
I was searching last night for Warez^H^H^H^H^HOpen Source Software downloads and it wasn't giving me any greif about what seemed to ba a fairly long search string.
[/curiousity]
Even people that believe in pre-destiny look both ways before crossing the street.
Now, if they will just accept regular expressions.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"it's also of great help to certain tools using the Google API"
Hardly. The Google API is limited to 1000 searches per day, making it useless for any sort of web application. About the only thing I can think of that it would be useful for is a desktop program in which the user would only perform a limited number of searches.
return -EIDONTCARE;
Seems like another step in the evolution towards Google Grid / EPIC
The 32 word thing is cool... But adding the ability to add distribution lists to my contacts in GMail would be WAY more useful
Now I'll be able to search for the exact error message my windows boxes toss at me. Woo hoo!
If google had raised it's limits earlier, I could have skipped that school diploma and just went right into I.T. support.
Hardly. The Google API is limited to 1000 searches per day, making it useless for any sort of web application.
Perhaps for a pure non-profit web app, but if you're collecting advertising revenue you might be able to slide some of this Google's way for a higher limit.
Has anybody actually talked to someone at Google about licensing? (i.e. not just what's on the FAQ)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
In no particular order:
* A better query language, with wildacrds ("Word*") or stemming, proximity operators, parentheses, complex boolean expressions (something like what Dejanews and the pre-Yahoo AltaVista used to offer).
* Filtering out linkfarms and search-pages.
* or anything. The *s are ignored altogether. Try it (both ways). This is ~another~ of Google's maddening limitations. A sales rep told me wild card's not there because they have found that it doesn't increase search effectiveness by double -- whatever that means -- and that's their standard! Sheesh! Tawkabout monopolies!